People with alopecia share their stories

Alopecia, an auto-immune disease that causes hair loss, was brought center stage at the Oscars, when actor Will Smith slapped comedian Chris Rock over a joke about his wife Jada Pinkett Smith, who suffers from the condition. We hear from people across the U.S. who are living with the disease, and correspondent Nicole Ellis speaks with a leading expert to learn more about the auto-immune disorder.

• Dr. Brett King:

  Again, going back to the most typical presentation, that is, somebody who develops a spot or a few spots of hair loss, this will be what majority of people ever have with alopecia areata.

  One of the menacing things about this disease, though, is that it is very unpredictable. And so we don't know who is going to be the person that, in three weeks, three months, or three years, those two spots are going to turn into complete scalp hair loss or complete scalp hair loss, in addition to loss of eyebrows and eyelashes.

  And it is that unpredictability which makes — or is part of what makes the disease so difficult to deal with.

  What is really exciting, getting to your question of, are there treatments, what is really exciting is that, up until recently, there was not thought to be a very good treatment for people who have severe alopecia areata, people who have lost 50 percent or 80 percent or 100 percent of their scalp hair.

  One of the really exciting developments is, just two weeks ago, a paper was published in "The New England Journal of Medicine" showing a new medicine called baricitinib that grows hair in up to 40 percent of people with the most severe form of alopecia areata.

  And so, indeed, what was once something that was thought to be untreatable, we're completely changing that paradigm, and, indeed, there is hope for the future for people with this disease.